Rick Blaine

Back at the end of April I questioned whether or not the Twins were good. This team was expected to compete for the AL Central division, and there were real World Series aspirations. Now, owners of the worst record in baseball, it’s worth contemplating if any Twins team has flopped this badly.
 
We’re past the point of it being early, and there’s plenty of blame to go around, but much of it lands on the players in the dugout. Sure, Minnesota could go on a run and make it a relevant summer by playing some compelling baseball and battling back towards .500. The reality though, is that process will take months and there’s been nothing to suggest that development is coming.
 
Rocco Baldelli has pulled strings that haven’t worked, but he’s also watched a plethora of injuries dog his roster, and an overall ineffectiveness of talent be put on full display. The front office failed to put their best foot forward across the board, but even the alternatives are somewhat of a reason. This clubhouse was built on holdover and internal talent. Simply put, they haven’t been good enough.
 
The 2016 Twins were nothing short of a dumpster fire. That group lost 103 games and the house was cleaned. After a 2nd place finish in the division the year prior, a level of ineptitude that low probably wasn’t expected. They weren’t expected to be juggernauts however, and much of the groundwork was laid early on when the Paul Molitor club started the season 0-9. That Twins team recorded their 13th victory while already owning 34 losses. This group sits at 13-25, but it’s not hard to imagine a further slide with a difficult week ahead.
 
Since beginning the year 5-2, Minnesota has gone on a stretch culminating in an 8-23 record. They have hit poorly, pitched badly, and played defense embarrassingly. There have been very few bright spots to this group as a whole, and even where there have been, they likely have a blemish or two to their credit as well.
 
It’s May, so looking at who becomes trade bait and which assets you might ship off still seems a bit premature. If nothing else, the level of practicality in terms of other teams desire probably won’t get sorted out until there’s at least another month worth of a sample size. That said, it’s beyond high time that the guys in this clubhouse take this personally. I have no indication that there’s a character or clubhouse problem, but the nightly meltdowns have gotten to a point where the embarrassment is bordering on apathy. No one should feel bad for a group of underachievers, and neither should those currently going through it. Adversity has offered the opportunity to respond, and there’s more than enough talent for a relative turnaround.
 
No one saw this coming for the Twins, and the only ones able to course correct are those that are on the field. Take it personal. Make a stand. Do something to stop this incredibly poor level of play we’ve now seen for over a month.
 
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Horse and rider emerged from the yawning chasm beneath the field, as if escaping the jaws of some unfeeling limestone beast. He sat his horse and glassed downcountry. Through a veil of dust coppered by bloodred sunset he could make out the number 411 painted on a fence. Just beyond that number, swaddled in bootblack darkness, lay his warrant. A place whose dominion belonged neither to God nor man but a purgatory of whose provenance none were certain and all feared but him. He would go to the bullpen and exact a confession of all its truths. 
He scabbarded his rifle and put bootheel to horse’s flanks and they rode on. As they rode he looked up at the flags mounted atop the edifice surrounding him, flags that pointed downward sullenly like some ancient penitents. They bore the crude markings of years once thought remarkable and now thought of not at all, as though they belonged to another world entire. 1965. 1987. 1991. A world beyond imagining, preserved only in ancient scribes’ faded memories, palimpsests upon which now showed only the bottomless abyss of now, faint tracings of Jeff Reardon giving way to the stark outline of Alexander Colomé. Though lately he hadn’t been too bad. They rode on.
He looked into the stands at the fans, their brokenness unable to be hidden by the grotesqueries they were committing with the barrelsized ales and meats lacquered with sauce embalmed in bread they unceasingly lifted to their mouths, trying without recompense to atone for what they were witnessing of their own free will. Is this how one baseballs? No it is not. Only the damned baseball such as this.
Here was another. He held a crude placard aloft, beseeching an unseeable and unknowable God, Circle Me Bert. A plea for a faithless arbiter to encase him in a telastractic orb, thus consecrating him as worthy of notice on the sprawling contraption electric, so that all his kin may know his life was of some brief consequence before his vanishing from the world, yet unaware this judge had been judged himself to be without merit and banished from the Hadean landscape upon which he now trod. 
He arrived. He pulled up the reins and dismounted and knocked on the door. From within he heard low murmurs and scuffling of metal on dirt. Sounds unencumbered by bravery. No answer. He knocked again. Silence. There will not be a third knock, he said. 
He heard a thump, a creak, and the door swung open. The reckoning was at hand.